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My head was still just a little slower than I would have liked. It didn’t matter so much when I was talking about the clusterfuck few years after my mother’s death.
But for this part, the part that ended with me in his house fraudulently, looking through his stuff, lying to him? Yeah, I needed to get it right.
“If it helps,” Emilio said as I came back and regained my perch on the arm of the couch, feeling like it would be wrong to sit next to him when I was telling him all the dirty details about my betrayal. “I’m not mad at you.”
“You should be,” I said, gaze on my mug.
“I think maybe I should be the judge of that, yeah?” he asked.
And, God, why did he have to be so damn… good?
It was only making this harder. Even if, in his mind, he probably thought he was making it easier.
“I was coming home from work,” I started.
“Where were you working?” he asked.
It wasn’t a pertinent detail, but it almost felt like he wanted to know because some part of him still wanted to know about me. Not just the situation.
“I was working a temp job that day. I usually worked in a store, but I took temp jobs when I could find them too.” And holiday gigs. And babysitting. Literally anything I could to keep the lights on.
It had been a soul-sucking temp job, too. A long day in a scratchy, secondhand blazer and slacks that bit a little too tight in at the waist, answering endless phones under unyielding fluorescent lights that had given me a headache by noon. And, well, the boss was an ass-grazer.
I’d been in a crummy mood when I got home.
Then I’d flicked on a light.
And there were three men in my apartment.
“Renzo Lombardi?” Emilio asked.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I mean, I had no idea who he was. I had long since lost track of who was who in that Family since Frank went away. But, you know, you guys all have a vibe.”
“A vibe?” Emilio prompted, brow raising.
“Just a sort of aura about you guys. A confidence paired with intimidation. And the suits. There’s always the suits.”
“So you knew it was someone in the Family.”
“Yeah. I figured maybe Frank had sent someone to threaten me about Cage, though,” I admitted.
“Avery Brennan,” the leader of the crew had said, looking me over.
“I, ah, yeah. If you’re here because of Frank, I don’t know where Cage is. He’s an adult now. I can’t tell him what to do anymore.”
I didn’t admit this part to Emilio, but my first thoughts about Renzo Lombardi were how hot he was.
What can I say? I was a young, healthy woman who could appreciate his tall, dark, handsome looks. Even if a sort of menacing vibe hung all around him. More so, even, than any of the other mob bosses I’d known over the years. Even if he was younger than any of the others.
I had to figure that the menacing thing was because it took a really strong, really fucking ruthless man to take over a Family like theirs. Especially when you were younger than most of the other members at the time.
“Don’t give a fuck about Frank,” he’d said. “But I am here because of Cage.”
“Who are you?” I’d asked.
“Renzo Lombardi,” he’d stated. “And we have a situation.”
“We?” I’d asked.
“Your brother has fucked up. Worse than usual,” he’d added, making it clear that while we had been left to our own devices, someone had been keeping an eye. “Which is saying something because all that kid does is fuck up.”
“I try to get him help.”
“Imagine that’s true. But now he needs it. In a different way.”
“What did he do?” I’d asked, heart hammering. Because, yeah, under all the hurt feelings, he was my brother. I did care.
“Your brother has been going around talking about his connection to this Family,” Renzo had explained.
“That’s it? I mean, yeah, that’s wrong of him. I mean, technically, but that’s worse than all the drinking and drugs and stealing?”
“The problem is, people, yeah, they listen. Then they scheme. Then they carry out those schemes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“See, there’s these Irish fucks who are breathing down my fucking neck on a good goddamn day. Then they had to go and overhear your pain in the ass brother boasting and talking shit. So they’re fucking with him. And by extension, me. If we don’t do what they want, the threat is they will snatch him.”
“Snatch him? You mean… kidnap him?”
“Yeah. And, to put it gently, they won’t be kind to the little shit.”
“That was putting it gently?” Emilio asked, wincing.
“Renzo is… straight-shooting,” I said, shrugging.
“Why would they take Cage, though?”
“To get Renzo’s attention, I guess. I don’t know all the details, but from what I could gather… the Irish mafia in the area had some deal with this guy who owned some real estate in the area. And he was in debt up to his eyeballs with the mafia, so he sold something that he had no right, in their eyes, to sell.”
